


tell me how all this will ruin us

by Handful_of_Silence



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 15:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3942526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handful_of_Silence/pseuds/Handful_of_Silence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> There is a brief silence punctuated only by the pot boiling and clicking off, the sound of harsh breathing. And then Foggy starts crying.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	tell me how all this will ruin us

**Author's Note:**

> Daredevil Prompt: Matt/Foggy, Foggy needs comforting.

It is a Wednesday morning, cold and brittle, and Foggy hasn’t arrived yet. 

Karen comments that it’s overcast and drizzling as her morning welcome, shaking out her wind-broken umbrella. She straightens out her hair by running her fingers through the crinkles the weather’s made of it. Matt can hear the high wind scowling against the outside walls, the dull impressions of Karen’s footsteps as she sorts through files and paperwork. He sips carefully on coffee just the wrong side of hot, and feels out the Buccellato case-files for the hearing Friday, finger-pads skimming over his braille terminal. 

Karen’s watch has an echoing tick that is minutely too fast. Matt keeps having his phone read the time back to him, fidgets in his seat. He is not concentrating on the Buccellato files. He listens to the dog-bark of the wind, and the scritch of Karen’s pen nib against paper, the off-skew tick of her watch. He wonders where Foggy is. 

Between the two of them, they leave three calls that go straight to answerphone. 

“I’m going to take my lunch break, I think,” Matt says decisively around quarter to twelve, standing up and already reaching out for his cane propped up against the wall. Karen knows he’s lying, offers him company, but he says he’ll be fine.

On street-level, he forces himself through the push-back of the wind, hearing siren-wails, the crinkle of weighed down plastic bags, the rattle of buggy-wheels, the rasp of dirt and litter ground undershoe. Instead of focusing in on these, tuning into the pell-mell of the city, he thinks of the time, and the mechanical voice of the answerphone. He walks faster. 

When he gets to the apartment block where Foggy lives, the lift is broken again, so he takes the stairs two at a time up four flights. He runs his hand along the walls of the fifth floor corridor, dislodging peeling plaster and shoddy paintwork. Mrs Ramirez at No. 73 has put something spicy on the stove, and it makes his tongue tingle. In the apartment opposite Foggy’s, a door slams shut. The wind is still rumbling outside like the thrum of the subway. 

Matt tap-knocks on Foggy’s door, a playful _you decent in there?_ code from their college days, and listens through the thin wood. 

There is movement after a few moments, too slow, ungainly. Something is knocked over and clatters, there is the rustle of papers and a cup being clunked down on the counter. Then the uneven pad-pad-pad of footsteps, patterned like a limp, and finally the grind of the door bolt being undone. 

“Oh hey,” Foggy’s voice sounds hoarse and sleep-scratchy. “Is this my early morning booty call?”

Foggy does not smell right. Clammy, unwell. There is the tang of old sweat and deodorant, his hair frizzed through with the day-old manufactured aroma of apple shampoo. There isn’t the faint trace of mint from Foggy’s value-brand toothpaste, and there isn’t even the lingering tones of coffee on his breathe to indicate he’s had his usual three by lunchtime. He’s still jittery.

His voice is pitched forcefully light, a tremor trapped under his skin. His heart-beat is not calm. 

Matt pushes a smile onto his own face. 

“Do I need an excuse to see my favourite person?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, you realise.” Foggy’s quips are slower than usual, not as quick-fire, hunched in on themselves in delivery. “It’s only my body you’re after. It’s cool, I understand.”

Even Matt can tell Foggy is barely smiling as he speaks. 

“Can I come in then, Casanova?”

“Yeah, sure, why not.” Foggy steps aside and relocks the door when Matt crosses the threshold. There is something rickety about the stretch of muscle under his skin. “Can I er – get you anything? Coffee? Your mug’s still here. I cleaned it and everything.”

Foggy’s default reactions are taking over at this point. Matt dutifully keeps his voice as calm as possible. His hand wants to reach out and soothe this ruffled nervousness, but he keeps a tight hold on his cane.

“Just a small one.”

Matt follows Foggy into the cramped kitchenette. There is that sound again, the crunching clacking of something not-right under his skin, groaning like the weak point in floorboards. There’s something wrong with the way he’s walking. 

“You weren’t at work this morning,” he starts tentatively, testing the ground. “I was worried.”

“You just missed the opportunity to ogle this fine form,” Foggy says, and his heartbeat jumps faster as he presumably reaches into the overhead cupboard to pull down the jar of coffee granules. “Sorry ‘bout that. I just – I wasn’t feeling very well.”

This in itself is not a lie. Matt takes another step out onto the ice. 

“Don’t worry. We just weren’t sure. The Jameson case can wait a couple of days, take all the time off you need.”

“Thought me being a partner meant I could take as many frivolous days-off as I wanted?” From the sound of it, Foggy is struggling to uncap the suction lid on the jar. His hands are shaking too hard. “Thanks, Matt. There’s no need to worry, I should be up and about in a while. Back to my peak of human perfection before you know it.”

There is a clatter, a _ting_ and the sound of something bouncing on the linoleum, and then the rain-patter of coffee granules spilling onto the floor. 

“For _fuck’s_ sake,” Foggy swears. His voice breaks in the middle, and his breath judders like a ship run aground when he tries to breathe out normally. 

“Don’t worry, Fog. It’s only coffee.” Matt tries for levity. It does not work. 

There is a brief silence punctuated only by the pot boiling and clicking off, harsh scrappy breathing. And then Foggy starts crying. 

Matt surges forward without thinking, reaching out and wrapping his arms around the other man, feeling him physically shrink into his touch. Foggy sways and stumbles, and the lack of balance has them both sinking to the floor. Foggy presses his face into Matt’s shoulder, his sobbing louder. His fingers tug on Matt’s suit lapels as his whole body quakes. 

“Oh Matt,” he gasps. “Oh Christ, Matt.”

Matt feels something broken and ugly at the bottom of his heart, hurting like something hidden’s been dragged right out of him without warning, some weakness bared kicking and yowling in the light. He tries to calm him, rocking his partner gently, shushing him, murmuring meaningless words. And Foggy is still not calming down, his anguish taken root, trembling and keening like this pain is the only thing he knows. 

“What’s wrong?” Matt begs, alarmed, and his own voice is unsteady, damp and newly christened with grief. Foggy is heavy in his arms. “Please, tell me. Let me help you.”

Foggy tries. He does. But his anguish is almost hysterical in its intensity, and he is getting to the point where he can barely breathe with the force of it. His fingers clutch frantically, trying to anchor himself, and he buries his face in Matt’s shirt to muffle his sobs. Matt wraps his arms tighter around him, feeling useless and lost, reduced to holding onto the wreckage of a man he had thought almost unconquerable as Foggy chokes on his own agony, making broken hiccupping noises. Struggling to breath and inconsolable. 

His heartbeat is jack-hammer frantic over the groan of the outside wind. 

“Talk to me, Fog, please.” Matt’s own voice is wet now. There’s one last tender place at the heart of him that’s survived everything this city has tried to bury it with, and now even that is not untouched as he feels Foggy break under him. 

He wonders how long this has been building up, goes over recent memories with a desperate ferocity to find something, _anything_ that can explain this. He comes up blank and angry at his helplessness. 

Foggy’s grief is overwhelming, raw. Matt never wants to hear this sound again. 

It takes a long time for his friend to exhaust himself with crying. They remain half-sat on the kitchen floor surrounded by crushed coffee-granules. Matt’s leg has gone numb, and Foggy’s quietened down to gasping sobs. Matt is still clasping him in his arms, feeling the rasp of the ragged Columbia t-shirt Foggy sleeps in, one arm around his back, the other stroking rhythmically through his hair. 

“I just – oh God, I just don’t want to die,” Foggy chokes out of nowhere, and starts crying again, like he’s broken apart his fragile composure by saying it aloud.

“What do you mean?” Matt whispers. The world’s suddenly a little bit colder, a little darker, and he’s trying so damn hard to hold it together for Foggy. What have I missed?, he thinks frantically. “I don’t understand. You-You’ve got to tell me. Please Fog.”

He does not say _you’re scaring me sweetheart_. The quiver in his voice does that for him. 

“I’ve got cancer,” Foggy confesses against Matt’s collarbone. The world slows, stops. The wind falls silent. “It’s called Ewing’s sarcoma, and… it’s bad, really bad. I’ve known for a few weeks, and I didn’t mean to hide it, I just didn’t, didn’t know how to tell you. Because everything’s been going so well, y’know, with the practice and with us…” Foggy reaches out for Matt’s hand, and Matt squeezes it too hard back. “…A-and then I went to the doctor’s yesterday, and he said it was _spreading_ … and the chemo is just so much _money_ , even with my health insurance, and there’s no way I can afford it, and _even then_ …” His voice is getting reedier, more distraught, on the verge of tears again. “… the c-chances of remission are so fucking awful Matt… a-and I can’t, I _can’t_ ….”

“Shhh,” Matt threads his fingers through Foggy’s hair. He is trying not to let his voice shake. He is trying not to panic. Foggy needs him to be calm, and yet his throat is clamming up, tears gathering at the bottom of his lashes. He presses one, two kisses to Foggy’s crown. “It’ll be alright.”

He lets Foggy settle his head against his chest. He repeats these words. 

“It’ll be alright,” he says more than once. He’s not even sure what he’s saying. 

After a few moments of dazed silence, he leans his cheek against Foggy’s hair. 

“We’ll sort this, ok?” he says. “We’ll find the money somewhere, and get you well again, because I know you’re going to kick cancer in the ass, ok?”

Foggy makes a damp approximation of a laugh, more a scrape at the sides of his throat. 

“We’ll sort this,” Matt promises. “Together. You and me against the world, you remember?”

_I love you_ , he thinks but does not say. This need, this weakness at the centre of him for one human being, its intensity scares him. He hopes this is love because he wouldn’t know what to do with this otherwise. 

“You and me, Fog,” he says instead, pressing another kiss to his head. He can’t go through with saying those words just yet. 

He listens with a sickening clarity to the gnawing of something that should not be there under Foggy’s skin. Knows he can’t promise this, does anyway. 

“Come on,” he murmurs finally after another split-knuckle silence where the world carries on wrong. He is making a thing of shattered words and ill-fitting reassurances in his throat and calling it calm. He feels splintered. Adrift. He didn’t think he could feel this way about anything. “Let’s get you up, huh?”

For a moment, they just remain. Breathing. Foggy catching his breath. Matt sitting very still, consoling himself with the other man’s heartbeat. Then Foggy shifts uncomfortably, and Matt helps him up. Once they are standing, Matt wipes away Foggy’s tears crusted onto his eyelashes with his sleeve. There must be an expression on his face that reflects this crumpled shell-shocked thing at the centre of him, because Foggy cups a hand to his cheek and says “Hey baby, don’t make that face huh? One of us here has to be the pretty one.” Matt clenches his eyes shut for a moment and swallows. 

“Anything you say,” he finally replies. 

Matt takes hold of Foggy’s hand, and leads him across and down the hallway into his bedroom. He lays him down like some holy relic, pulls the covers up over him. Strokes his hair from his forehead, settles little kisses on his face. He will not say that he is suddenly terrified Foggy will not be here. 

“Are you trying to get me all riled up, Mr Murdock?” Foggy asks, his gestures sluggish as he threads his fingers through Matt’s. This is the way he deals with things. Laughs and makes jokes and lies to himself. That hurts to watch, but everyone needs their crutch to lean on. Matt just needs to make sure Foggy will not do this alone. 

“Rest,” Matt says softly, uncoupling their fingers. He rubs his thumb over Foggy’s knuckles. 

Foggy’s tone turns unsure. “But what about…?”

“When you wake up,” Matt promises. “We’ll sort it then. You and Me.”

He cards his hands through Foggy’s lank hair. They exchange a few more words, and Matt stays until heavy breathing lets him know the other man is sleeping. 

He goes into the kitchen. Does his best to clear up the coffee granules from the floor. His fists clench, he feels itchy under his skin. He feels like breaking something. 

He wants to start a war but there is no-one to fight. 

_Later_ , he thinks. _We will sort this later._

He calls Karen, keeping his voice low so as not to wake him. Tells her Foggy’s not feeling well, that she might as well shut up for the day. It’s not good for business, but his mind is on other things. 

He sets out a tin of soup on the counter and rifles through the cupboards to find some bread ready for when Foggy wakes up. He wipes his hand across his face to dispel tears. This happens more than once. 

Around him, the world has dimmed to torchlight. He sits in the corner of the sofa, the cushion moulded to his back, and stares at the point where the floor meets the wall. He prays under his breath, clenching the cross around his neck against his palm, blocking out the sound of the wind outside. He does this for a long time. 

Afterwards, he puts his head in his hands, and listens to the gentle rasp of Foggy’s breathing. His heartbeat unwavering. 

These things have to be enough for now.


End file.
